Call of Cthulhu d20 Preservation Society

[jeff37923]

I'm told the Necronomicon is real...but not as lovecraft described it...

/me just wanted an excuse to share the link...

Gak!

The truth is much more funny.

A study of the cultural phenomenon that is The Necronomicon, and its many derivations:

http://www.necfiles.org/

HP Lovecraft and The Necronomicon, the Final Thoughts section is the best:

http://www.hplovecraft.com/creation/necron/

The entire HP Lovecraft Archive is a great resource for the horror genre enthusiast, I highly recommend that people read it:

http://www.hplovecraft.com/

 

[TerraDave]

Now what does Chaosium have the rights to exactly? Is Cthulhu, Deep Ones, and all the rest their property? I thought Lovecraft's work was Public Domain stuff. I remember reading something that Dennis Detwiller said that Chaosium only had the rights to the BRP system.

There have been a couple of ENworld threads on this....according to some, including Monte Cook (in comments on his website), it is basically open. According to others, early Lovercraft is open, byt later stuff is sill under copyright by Arkam house, who liscened it to Chaosium. One issue seems to be Lovecraft basically opening up the mythos to other writters, and if that made it public domain.

And there is Cthulhu stuff out there you can buy that is not Arkam or Chaosium. A lot of confusion on this issue comes from the 1st Deities and Demigods (appropriately), and why later printings did not have the Cthulhu mythos. One story about that is here

In terms of CoC d20, technically it is not open content. So even if the Mythos is public domain, you could not use certain things, like the spells, that are unique to that book in a 3rd party publication. BTW, thanks the UA, the sanity system is open. So you probably could do a D20 Modern Cthulhu suplement, for example, but would have to replace somethings.

 

[MonsterMash]

So D20CoC is well worth buying if I can find a copy then?

I've played the BRP version for years (and had been playing RQ2 before that) so I'd probably still play the BRP version, but if the source material is good then I could mine that for stuff for D20 games and CoC.

 

[Desdichado]

The source material is excellent. Not only can you use it for non-Cthulhu games, because it's standard d20 format, but the GM advice is probably the best. ever. written.

And you can pick it up new from Amazon for about half the original price. I'd absolutely recommend it. EDIT: at least in North America. I haven't looked at amazon.uk.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Fine Mr. Dyal

Let's first look at Sanity (now this is based on the RQ system):

In BRP to get a +1d6 to Sanity you must have 90%+ in a single skill. Assuming a character starts with around a maximum of 75% in a skill and he earns a check mark meaning he will have a 75% of earning +1d6 to his skill, meaning an average of 0.875 skill point on the first adventure (per skill with a check). The average number of skill points you get will mathematically decrease arithmatically (to 24%, 23%, ... , 9%) and thus it will take over TWENTY adventures to gain that sanity bonus. Also Gaining Cthulhu Mythos could destroy your character in that same amount of time.

In d20 you gain back +1d6 sanity every level. This could easily happen every one to three adventures. And since Cthulhu Mythos is gained at 1-2 points per unlucky roll rather than 5%, it will take three times as many adventures for it to destroy your character. Also characters become unplayable at -10 Sanity rather than 0 Sanity.

Now let's look at hit points:

In BRP your hit points are never greater than your (SIZ + CON)/2, so on average you will have on average (13 + 11)/2 = 12 hit points. You will suffer a shock effect if you take more than half your hit points which in this case is 6, you will be unconscious at 1, 2, or 3 hit points, so actually you only have 9 hit points in the D&D sense. Healing is at 1d3 per week, so any injured character will be out for an average of five weeks. Damage from monsters is +1d6 per eight points of STR + SIZ, whereas a d20 size class gives you a +4 Str and +0-2 points for damage (increase of one die) and there are far fewer size classes in d20 than there are in CoC (I did a BRP to d20 SIZ conversion table, just don't have it here). So on average the monsters are doing more damage in BRP.

In d20 we have hit points based on level. By 5th level, d20 characters can have more hit points on average than any BRP character, and they still have 15 levels to advance. The 10 hit point MDT becomes less and less important as your Fort Save increases. A starting character can have up to a +8 Fort Save giving only a 35% chance of failure, and it gets better as you go up in level.

And now Magic.

In BRP it is true there is no limit on you POW, but POW increase rolls become harder and harder to gain. So the practical limit is around 25. So your magic points are 25 or less, so you can only cast spells so many times before you are exhausted.

In d20 the cost is spread across the ability scores as ability damage, allowing more casting of magic and thus more reliance on magic. As long as the characters protect their spellcaster (now which game does that sound like, hmmm), they can use magic much more often than in BRP.

So in having characters with generally higher sanities, faster skill acquisition (you can extrapolate that from my first paragraph), more hit points, creatures doing less damage, an MDT mechanic meant to be meaningful but easily circumvented, and more frequent spell casting you have a game that is more Pulpy than Horror. I am sure if I had the rulebooks in front of me I could easily point out other systemic differences.

Now, I'm not saying that is totally a bad thing. CoCd20 is easily one of my favorite games, its just the play comes out differently from BRP.

 

[Gomez]

According to others, early Lovercraft is open, byt later stuff is sill under copyright by Arkam house, who liscened it to Chaosium. One issue seems to be Lovecraft basically opening up the mythos to other writters, and if that made it public domain.

I read somewhere that at one point Chaosium was paying Arkham house for the rights to do Call of Cthulhu. That was until Chaosium found out that Arkham House didn't infact have the rights to any Mythos stuff (it was public domain) and they stopped paying them.

 

[Desdichado]

Now, I'm not saying that is totally a bad thing. CoCd20 is easily one of my favorite games, its just the play comes out differently from BRP.

Thanks for answering, and much more coherently than I've seen from most in the past. I know the two systems do play differently, but I suppose I still disagree that d20 is more "pulpy." For one thing, I think your greatest implicit assumption, which is not necessarily true, is some kind of leveling speed. In "long term campaign play", which has never been a CoC hallmark anyway, that might be an issue -- maybe -- but probably not. There's no assumption as to the speed at which you level inherent in the ruleset. Heck, we were playing the Nocturnum longterm campaign (unfortunately shelved as player's schedules became increasingly irreconcilable) and we had not leveled up at all, and had no expectation to after going through several of the "adventures" in the campaign.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Other Observations

Now I said it had more of a Pulp feel, just not enough. I want to actually run a Pulp Heroes or Adventure! Cthulhu game some time (oh the agony, I have turned Pulp Heroes into the game system I want it to be and WW comes out with d20 Adventure! which only requires a few tweaks, most stemming from the fact that the people at WW don't understand that a +1 die to a roll is not mathematically the same as a +1 bonus to a d20 roll is).

Now true, with a maximum of a 75% starting skill that means that a BRP character starts with the skill bases of a 12th level character (we can assume that they have Skill Focus and Skill Affinity feat equivelents to make them 7th level), but having the hit points of a 3rd or 4th level character, and no feats. So the power level is a little more difficult to compare. And BRP doesn't handle long term games very well, whereas d20 has tried to create a more campaign oriented game.

And now with Future d20, I can run the Cthulhupunk game I wanted to do, heh.

 

[TerraDave]

Now true, with a maximum of a 75% starting skill that means that a BRP character starts with the skill bases of a 12th level character (we can assume that they have Skill Focus and Skill Affinity feat equivelents to make them 7th level), but having the hit points of a 3rd or 4th level character, and no feats. So the power level is a little more difficult to compare. And BRP doesn't handle long term games very well, whereas d20 has tried to create a more campaign oriented game.

Right, from memory, a BRP charecter can do a lot with their starting skills (otherwise you would never get anywhere in the game). But would not seem to be as survivable. However, again from memory, fighting cultists or the least powerfull of creatures was perfectly do-able. It was against the big bad stuff (most of it) that you where in trouble (dead), and it seemed like you could have a 100 hp's and it wouldn't be enough.

However, combat didn't happen that much, and could be a little wonky. I think if combat was more frequent, the more straight foward d20 system (and the one in CoC d20 is streamlined a little bit) would have the edge.

 

[TerraDave]

I read somewhere that at one point Chaosium was paying Arkham house for the rights to do Call of Cthulhu. That was until Chaosium found out that Arkham House didn't infact have the rights to any Mythos stuff (it was public domain) and they stopped paying them.

LOL...this would seem to fit the pattern...